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0 pointssnapplebobapple1y ago0 comments

altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)

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kmeisthax1y ago· 1 in thread

"Freeloading" is a feature, not a bug.

Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and everything we met. Hell, ants wouldn't be in colonies if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if they don't increase individual reproductive success.

Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards themselves. To address your specific examples:

- The whole goal of authoritarianism is to "become the freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to attack the out-group as well as internally justify their own freeloading.

- Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer humanity.

- "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation" is a freeloading behavior. Copyright and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture vaguely at the European medieval period's economic stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point out that this economic stagnation was itself the product of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth was the product of rents.

Diving further into that last point... the economic system in which the majority of wealth is the product of rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You can't innovate in a feudal system because of all the owners demanding their cut. Innovation requires freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to make from that innovation, then there will not be innovation.

[0] actually most mammals and primates especially

[1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the invention that can then be used to bully competing users of the original patent. This practice is known as evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical industry.

[2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of business model"

snapplebobappleOP1y ago

Wow, you sure like to write essays...

Your whole essay utterly misses the point in multiple ways:

- Freeloading is not a feature or a bug, it's just something that happens when the expected value of exchange is unbalanced. If it is too unbalanced it makes the system unstable (i.e. causes war, violence, unfriending, etc. at different scales). The cry for more altruism of the OP almost always leads to a too unbalanced system, thus the problem.

- Yes we are wired to be altruistic to our in group (as I mentioned already). The outgroup we will routinely do horrible atrocities to with little thought or care. How in the in group one is will determine how unbalanced someone is willing to allow exchange to get. I.e. one will generally be fine with personally dumping large amounts of resources into a disabled immediate family member but will not be ok with personally dumping the same resources into a stranger across the globe (or across the city, or perhaps even into an acquaintance down the street).

- It's not that relevant what you think authoritarianism is classified as, it's only relevant that it's bad for freedoms many enjoy and that benefit society. Same deal with your take on nationalism. You should have edited these points out after rereading my comment because they don't matter. It's a missing the forest through all the trees situation.

- Yah, you chose the examples of innovators getting wealthy that is least relevant to societal improvement (and has huge problems I disagree with like excessive terms for copyright among many other problems). It's much more basic than that. Through much of history you lacked basic rights that ensured you could operate a business around your idea. A subset of the population had the right to just take it and that killed any motivation of the individual to act on their good ideas. Copyrights and patents came much later than the actual freedom that really matters for this. Your following paragraph is also a swing and a miss because of the above. It's not what I was talking about.

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